


An Indulgence

by katikat



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Obsession, Torture, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat
Summary: After Murdoc kills Helman, it’s just him and Mac, bleeding on the ground. Mac’s POV. (Unbeta'd)





	An Indulgence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for enchantedblackforest on Tumblr who wanted a ficlet about "what could’ve gone down between Murdoc and Mac if Jack showed up a little bit later."

Jack runs off to play bait and Mac starts working on his trap. He feels a little like Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, tying weights to the dirty blue tarp, not that he would ever admit that to Jack, of course.

And as those silly thoughts run through his head, mixed with worry and no little fear, he hears it, the tiniest of sounds, and his heart skips a beat. Without having to turn around, he knows what it means, who’s standing behind him. Slowly, Mac lifts his head, and steeling himself, he turns around.

And there he is, Murdoc, standing there with a gun in his hands and a self-satisfied smirk on his lips. He  _knows_ he has MacGyver at his mercy and Mac knows it, too. For once, he’s out of options, out of ideas, his mind’s completely blank.

Murdoc has his gun trained at Mac’s chest, dead center, a bullet to the heart. There’s no way he’ll miss at this distance. But then, Murdoc’s smirk widens and he shifts his outstretched arms to his right, a little off-center, aiming to maim, not kill now - and then a bang echoes through the big room, deafeningly loud, and a bullet tears into Mac’s shoulder, half-turning him around and dropping him.

He hits the ground hard, out of breath, and the pain’s so terrible it fogs over his brain for a moment and his sight grows dark around the edges as oblivion threatens to overcome him. He tries to fight it, instinctively, knowing that if he loses consciousness now, he’s dead for sure.

At the same time, there’s a salvo of following shots. Those are not aimed at him, though, Mac realizes and when he forces himself to turn his head to the side, he sees Helman fall face first to the dirty floor; the hitman doesn’t get back up, dead or seriously wounded, out of the game for sure.

Wheezing, trying to draw breath into his starving lungs, Mac gathers his strength but the moment he lifts his head off the floor, black dots start dancing in front of his eyes and the whole left side of his chest seizes, forcing his heart to slam against his ribcage to keep up. He drops back down, swallowing a whimper and riding out the pain.  _God, it hurts!_

There’s a shuffle and Mac blinks and looks up at Murdoc through a haze of tears that sprang into his eyes involuntarily. The killer’s creeping closer on silent feet, with a big smile on his face now and his gun trained at Mac once more. Now that Murdoc took out the biggest threat, it’s just him and Mac.

 _Jack_ , Mac thinks desperately,  _where are you? I need you, please. Jack…!_

As if reading his mind, Murdoc’s smile widens into a real grin. “If you hope for Jack to come rushing to your rescue, you’ll be disappointed,  _Angus_.”

Mac’s heart skips a beat again but this time, he’s afraid for Jack. White noise settles in his ears, his breath quickens in panic and he starts feeling lightheaded. “What did you… do to him?” Mac croaks out.

Murdoc circles around him, then he sinks down into a crouch by Mac’s left side, hands hanging between his knees, gun dangling from his fingers. “Ah, don’t worry, little mouse. I did  _not_ kill your guard dog - though I did feel very,  _very_ tempted, I did, mind you. But no, I locked him up, stowed him safely away so that we could…  _chat_ in peace, just the two of us.” He waves the gun between them.

“Chat?” Mac asks in disbelief.

“Of course, an opportunity like this doesn’t present itself every day, you know?” Murdoc states as if Mac were slow. “I  _am_ interested in learning more about you,  _Angus_ , in getting to know you better, especially since it seems we have  _so much_ in common, you and I.”

Now Mac growls a little. “We  _don’t_!” he snaps harshly.

Chortling, Murdoc pats him on the stomach condescendingly. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Mac tries to squirm away from the touch but it only makes his shoulder hurt more. So he stops, squeezing his eyes shut and slowing down his breathing.

“If you… locked Jack up… and I’m down… shouldn’t you be  _running_?” he asks when he finally opens his eyes again and sees Murdoc still there, crouching by his side with his head tilted a little, as if studying an interesting specimen. The fact that he didn’t take off yet makes no sense, considering there’s no one to stop him now.  _Why’s he sticking around?_

Murdoc rolls his eyes up, to the ceiling,  _hmming_. “I thought about it but, well, this is more fun,” he says, once again grinning down at Mac. “I can escape any time I want - as I’ve proven in the past - but  _this_ … to have you entirely to  _myself_? How could I resist such a  _temptation_?”

Seeing the mad gleam in Murdoc’s eyes, his intense look, focused entirely on his person, Mac shudders.

“Besides,” Murdoc adds cheerfully, “I  _did_ just save your life - if I didn’t clip you, my  _dear_ late mentor would’ve blasted you to smithereens - and I  _do_ deserve a reward for that. I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart, you know?”

“You don’t  _have_ a heart,” Mac mutters.

Murdoc points at him with his gun, raising his eyebrows. “Precisely! If someone shall kill you, MacGyver, it’ll be me. But, well, not  _today_. I really want to take my time, you know? Break you very, very slowly, one bone at a time,” he explains, punctuating every word with a tap of the gun’s muzzle against one of Mac’s ribs on the left side of his chest,  _tap-tap-tap_ , starting from the bottom and heading up, up,  _up_ towards the bleeding wound.

Every tap makes Mac twitch, with every touch of the muzzle against his ribcage he expects the gun to go off, despite what Murdoc just said, because he doesn’t believe that this it, that this-this  _game’s_ the reason why Murdoc didn’t simply run. He can’t imagine Murdoc possibly sacrificing his freedom just to play his twisted mind games with Mac.

“What do you want, then?” Mac snaps because the tension’s making his heart run a gallop, beat hard and his wound bleed even harder, and Mac can feel the warmth of his own blood spreading across his chest, soaking into his shirt, and his limbs, his fingers and toes, are growing cold and colder still from blood loss.

Now Murdoc’s grin turns beatific, bright with mad glee, and he leans closer and whispers excitedly, “I want to make you scream.”

And before Mac can do more than blink, Murdoc’s rib-counting reaches the wound itself and he rams the muzzle of his gun into the jagged hole the bullet gouged in Mac’s flesh, grinding it in with a cackle.

This time, Mac can’t stop himself from screaming because the pain’s just too much and he can feel the gun tear at the edges of the wound and the bullet still stuck in his body scrape against bone, he feels sick to his stomach, lightheaded, and the agony’s too much, it’s simply too much, he tries to curl up, to get away, but Murdoc doesn’t let him, he doesn’t let up, he doesn’t let go…

With a final, breathless scream, Mac loses consciousness.

* * *

Much later, when Mac wakes up in a hospital, Jack’s there, frantic with worry, haggard looking and pale from exhaustion, and he tells Mac that Murdoc’s in custody, that Jack caught him… that when he finally managed to break out of the room where the psycho locked him in and arrived at the scene of the shoot out, he found Murdoc bent over Mac, trying to  _stop_ him from  _bleeding out_! That more than anything else that happened that day seems to have shocked Jack, the fact that Murdoc was  _helping_ Mac.

Mac tries to explain what really happened back there, that Murdoc did save him from being shot in the back by Helman, sure, what followed, though, wasn’t an act of kindness but that of a sick, twisted mind. His mouth and throat are parched, though, his head aches and his shoulder’s awash with agony despite the drugs they’re pumping into him. And so he closes his eyes, promising himself to tell Jack later, when he actually feels up to discussing Murdoc.

Still, before he falls asleep, he can’t help but wonder once again why Murdoc stuck around even after he sated his craving to make Mac suffer. Because it doesn’t make any sense. If Murdoc got what he wanted, then why…?

Mac gets his answer the next time he wakes up. A visit with his son,  _that_ ’s what Murdoc got for saving Mac’s life,  _that_ was the real reward, torturing Mac was just the cherry on top, an…  _indulgence_. And now they’re both gone, father and son. While Mac lay unconscious in his hospital bed, Murdoc escaped again and he left a trail of bodies behind.

Mac squeezes his eyes shut, unable to bear Jack’s worried, anxious look, and his shoulder throbs with pain to the rhythm of his galloping heart, the wound a souvenir to remember Murdoc by.


End file.
